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We recently moved to a ranch style house and I am still working on finding places for my tools. My kids remind me that it is time to do some woodworking and go to my happy place. It is an important distraction for me and lets me focus on fun. I love the feel of the smooth wood and texture.

Saw the oncologist on Friday. Bloodwork looked good, platelets were a little lower, but nothing significant. The brain MRI showed no new brain lesions, some of the existing lesions were smaller or at least stable. Friday I started by second month or round of Temodar. My oncologist will be scheduling a PET-CT scan for September and we will see what effect the Temodar may be having on the rest of my body on the existing tumors scattered throughout. So far the only additional side effect is more fatigue. I bruise more easily, but that may also be the diabetes which was a gift of the steroids I am on since December.

yes...I took Temodar as a part of a bio-chemo attack on a stage IV diagnosis in Fall 2010. Unfortunately I was on 2 other chemo drugs and 2 immunotherapy drugs at the same time, so I was very sick. I do know that the combination of drugs shrunk my cancer! It resolved small lesions in other areas of my body. Good luck to you!

I'm sure you've been told the efficacy rate of temodar on Stage IV. Rarely effective. That said, I was put on it in 2008 after I received adoptive Tcell therapy or TIL at NCI. I was thrown off trial for having only a 25% regression in tumor instead of required 30%. Sent home basically to die in 3 months with a temodar scrip. Wound up going 23 months with increasing tumor regression TIL I got hit with brain mets. To this day we don't know if it was the TIL delayed, the temodar or the sequencing that gave me those months. Check out my profile to see the sequence of 7 clinical trials I've been on since 2005.

Decision Point (Decided to try Temodar after reading experiences from other patients. PET-CT scan scheduled for early September to see what the results look like. Still very lucky that I have no other pains.): Options now being considered are to do nothing. As long as I don't have pain and can function, keep doing what I want to do and enjoy each day. A second option is to try Temodar (temolozide). The list and types of side effects don't sound attractive and I wonder what my quality of life would be like while taking it. Third option, the Dartmouth chemotherapy regimen which sounds as bad or worse that interferon. Last option being considered is possible clinical trials, but that means lots of travel between my home and where they do the trials, if I would even qualify for one.

Other Care (MRI and PET-CTscans): Following the last treatment I recently had a brain MRI and also a PET-CT scan. MRI showed that there were no new brain tumors this time and those already there are stable. That was good news. The results of the PET-CT scan was not as encouraging. Multiple new tumors on organs, lungs, liver, and odd places like my shoulder and leg.

Good part of this is that I still have no pain. Biggest challenge is the fatigue, but I still have my mental faculties (at least I think so!).

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